From
Anthony Robinson on a visit to Brussels and the Flemish cities of Antwerp and
Ghent

Europe,
or rather the European Union, started and continues as an elite project.
Recognising the existence of the consequent “democracy deficit” EU draughtsmen
set up the European parliament, which has got steadily bigger as the original
six members expanded to the current 28, soon to be 27.

As
this week’s AEJ sponsored visit to the Euro-parliament coincided with the start
of the UK’s exit process it provided a great opportunity to find out how MEPs
thought about the institution and its
future.

In
the UK at least the doings of the European parliament are hardly ever reported,
and if they are it is usually in the context of Nigel Farage being rude to some
Johnny
Foreigner.

Maybe
our trade is doing a great disservice to democracy by its lack of interest. But
close up and personal it is very hard to imagine that this pharaonic building
of huge corridors and acres of empty space, is a real centre of power. It is
the place where some 780 MEPs from weirdly designed “constituencies” in 28
different countries debate, very formally, in dozens of languages and
organise themselves into very broadly defined cross border ideological
alliances. Just to complicate matter Parliament also regularly ups sticks and
heads off to Strasbourg.

This
is presumably so that no-one forgets that Alsace-Lorraine is once again part of
France and that the borders of Europe are those drawn after the last great
European civil war - which ended in 1945 with Europe in ruins and its fate in the
hands of the Americans and the Russians.

Whatever the reason, the fact that MEPs are happy to continue wasting billions
of Euros on this caravanserai is grist to the mill of sceptics who doubt the
EU’s capacity or will to reform.

After listening to MEPs I concluded that detachment of the already long
semi-detached and never fully engaged Brits is far from being the biggest
challenge facing the EU. Of far great potential explosive impact is the need
for reform of the dysfunctional Euro. The one size fits all currency has left
Germany and the Benelux countries with massive and permanent balance of
payments surpluses which reflect not only their more efficient economies but
also the unnecessary, indeed harmful, Euro-currency under-valuation.

The southern Euro members meanwhile languish with slow growth and shocking high
unemployment, especially among the young. Poor economic performance also
reflects the labour and other rigidities of France and Italy in particular, but
kicking the Euro system reform can down the road is placing undue power and
influence on the European Central
Bank.
It is not by chance that the newspapers are full of the doings of the European
Central Bank and not the European Parliament. For it is the ECB not the
Euro-parliament which holds the power and calls the shots.

The other existential challenge facing the EU is the re-emergence in modern
electronic form of a complex geo-political and military challenge from an
ideologically and politically hostile Russia, especially in the Balkans which
are not covered by a NATO security guarantee, and where incomplete EU expansion
has brought Slovenia and Croatia into the fold, as in Hapsburg times, but left
the orthodox Christian, mainly Slav, and Moslem Balkan parts of the former
Ottoman empire still beyond the pale.

The
defence of post-war Europe was under-pinned by the United States. But the Trump
administration has let it be known that the US is no longer prepared to
subsidise and underpin the defence of Europe, unless Europe pays its full share
of the bill, and not only in monetary terms. How will the former communists,
more militant Greens and single issue fanatics sprinkled among the MEPs cope
with the demand for higher military budgets and greater support for NATO? I
only pose the question.

Perhaps the biggest question mark however hangs over the future speed, and
above all future direction of travel for the EU27. MEPs admitted that the EU
faces multiple crises, which EU President Juncker himself admitted when he
recently submitted a list of five possible approaches to the future.

Once the UK leaves MEPs from Germany and like-minded northern members hint they
will push for a more dynamic policy, no longer subject to the doubts of newer
members, such as the “Visegrad 4.”

What remains to be seen is where exactly an EU no longer
moving at the pace of the “slowest ship in the convoy” will be heading.
Some MEPs expressed the hope for a “better not bigger Europe.” It seemed to me
however that the more likely direction of travel will be towards a more
centralised, federal state, towards the United States of Europe dreamt of by
the founding fathers.

But
you only have to take the train to Antwerp and Ghent and wander around these
wonderful monuments to Flemish, high European culture to savour the
extraordinary richness of a Europe which is simply too culturally,
linguistically and otherwise diverse to fit comfortably into a federal sack.